Somehow or another I missed this film which surprises me as the title
implies a combination of the Aces Go Places films and the Lucky Star films.
I have seen all five of the legitimate Aces films and have seen all the Lucky
Star films (Winners and Sinners, My Lucky Stars, Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars,
Return of the Lucky Stars, How to Meet the Lucky Stars and Ghost Punting).
The Aces series came out of Cinema City and starred the threesome of Sam
Hui, Karl Maka and Sylvia Chang while the Lucky Stars series had a core group
of actors but there were changes over the years. But Sammo Hung was behind
them under the Golden Harvest banner. What both series had in common was
crazy comedy, stunts and action all mixed together for a lovely cocktail
of entertainment and they were all pretty popular. The early Lucky Stars
films had Jackie Chan in them and the action was more upfront but when he
left after the first two films, the comedy began to dominate. Silly comedy.
Very silly comedy. Often involving chasing women.
Now that I have seen it I think I understand why I never bothered to watch
it before though I had the vcd for decades. I probably heard about it. The
title is basically misleading. It really isn't the Aces Go Places or the
Lucky Stars folks other than in slightly larger than cameo appearances. Most
of them do show up (even Jackie has a clip of one of his films shown in a
theater!) but then take a powder. So when you look at the cast listing it
is astonishing. So many names that are well known. Like a HK The Longest
Day listing. It would take too long to name them all. So I will just stick
to the film.
The Japanese terrorist group the Red Army is in Hong Kong buying weapons.
To stop them the Superintendent (Walter Tso Tat-wah - a legend going back
to the 1950s) decides to steal their funds. He doesn't think the cops should
do this so he tries to hire thieves. He contacts Kidstuff (Sammo) to gather
the Lucky Stars (Eric Tsang, Stanley Fung, Richard Ng, Michael Mui) to help
him but they are not interested. The Aces folks consist of Karl Maka and
Sylvia Chang - no Sam Hui - and they are cops. So Sammo has to form a new
group from loser cops. They are some big names - Andy Lau, Kent Cheng, Alan
Tam, Anthony Chan and Billy Lau. Sammo assigns a female instructor named
Yum Yum (Maria Tung Ling) to get them ready for the assignment. And then
Sammo does a Judge Crater disappearing act for most of the remaining film.
Most of the training consists of pranks and trying to grab her breasts. There
is of course a rape joke in there.
Not much of this is all that funny - some yes - but the action part of
this action comedy is lean - almost all provided by Andy. There is a terrific
scene when he is being trained by the police and he has to jump from building
to building and window to window to pass the test with some excellent stunts
by unknown men willing to take a wallop and a fall. And in the end Lau takes
on the main bad guy (Matsui Tetsuya) - but when Sammo finally shows up to
do some of his kicking I felt better. His five minutes made it all worthwhile.
For me. Directed by Eric Tsang.
